Caterpillar mountains help

[ChickPea]

To avoid making yet another Inkscape island, I thought I'd try something new. I've started on a river estuary map, showing a few villages/towns along the coastline (still a very early WIP). Because the villages are top-down style, I felt my usual triangle mountains wouldn't work because of the different perspectives. I thought I'd try a caterpillar mountains style instead.

Now I am very lazy and also can't draw very well, so there's no way I'm drawing all those little lines by hand. But Inkscape has my back, so I was able to create what I have fairly quickly. But... but... I dunno.... I've never done caterpillar mountains before, and I don't know if I'm going about it in the best way (I may yet bin the idea completely!)

So, my questions ...

1) Does this look like a pile of poop? If so, any suggestions on how to improve?
2) How about shading? I've only done the top right hills, and just used very subtle dark to light shading as elevation increases. Does this work, or is there something better I could try?

I don't even know if I'll continue with what I have, as I'm having major doubts. I've looked at a few other maps (for example, Warlin's incredible work) but I think his style is probably way out of my league. I'm really looking for something relatively simple, that hopefully doesn't look like crap.

Any thoughts/advice would be very welcome.

[jshoer]

I don't think it looks like a pile of poop at all!

The combination of solid rectangles for buildings and caterpillar mountains -- especially with a waterfront -- immediately makes me think of 19th century maps. In the style in thinking of, sometimes there were variations in the caterpillar hatching to indicate differences in slope, like many short lines for steep cliffs and fewer, longer lines for shallow hills. I'm not sure how easy that is too do in Inkscape, but of course there are other ways to do it as well. Right now I think the caterpillars are too uniformly short and too far apart to really feel cohesive to me, but it might not take much to change that opinion!

The other thing those 19th century maps do is shade the hills by relief, rather than by elevation. That gives you another way to meld the caterpillar hatching into the map more.

[Ilanthar]

Looks like an excellent start to me. I don't know Inkscape very well (I'm mostly using it to paliate the labelling problems of Krita), but I tend to like denser contour lines/ caterpillar ridges and like Joseph, I also think it looks better when you have variations of lengths (according to the slopes).

[ChickPea]

I don't think it looks like a pile of poop at all!

The combination of solid rectangles for buildings and caterpillar mountains -- especially with a waterfront -- immediately makes me think of 19th century maps. In the style in thinking of, sometimes there were variations in the caterpillar hatching to indicate differences in slope, like many short lines for steep cliffs and fewer, longer lines for shallow hills. I'm not sure how easy that is too do in Inkscape, but of course there are other ways to do it as well. Right now I think the caterpillars are too uniformly short and too far apart to really feel cohesive to me, but it might not take much to change that opinion!

The other thing those 19th century maps do is shade the hills by relief, rather than by elevation. That gives you another way to meld the caterpillar hatching into the map more.

Thanks so much for the feedback, Joseph. It's very helpful.

This map was somewhat inspired by an older map I chanced upon a while back (though I stupidly didn't save a copy, so I'm working from memory). My feeling is that it was older than 19th century, but possibly I'm mistaken on that. Doesn't really matter either way, but well done on spotting the style!

I like your suggestions about varying the line lengths and spacing, and I think - with a bit of experimentation - I may be able to figure out a way to do that. Well...maybe! I've got a couple of ideas to try anyway. It's possibly the uniformity of the caterpillar lines that's bugging me. No matter how much I wiggled the shape of the contours, they still didn't feel quite right. I'll see what I can do with some variations.

Looks like an excellent start to me. I don't know Inkscape very well (I'm mostly using it to paliate the labelling problems of Krita), but I tend to like denser contour lines/ caterpillar ridges and like Joseph, I also think it looks better when you have variations of lengths (according to the slopes).

Thanks for commenting, Ilanthar

I think denser contours probably would look a bit better, but I didn't want to give the impression of anything too steep. I've probably confused the issue by saying 'caterpillar mountains', when 'caterpillar big hills' might be a better description!

I'll try redoing the contours and see if I can work in some variation on the caterpillar lines. Hopefully a combination of the two will work ... if I can figure out a way.

I'll start on it tomorrow and post an update when I have one.

[GreatWhiteNorth]

I know I have two sets of caterpillar mountain brushes that I've downloaded from the guild here. Long enough ago that I'm not sure I could find the source exactly, at least for one (which I believe I downloaded from a post by J. Edward, so maybe reach out to him?)

This second one I downloaded from this thread by Diamond: https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=39978

That's the one I tend to use more. Give it a shot!

[ChickPea]

Thanks so much for the tip, GWN.

I'm actually making this map in Inkscape, so I can't use brushes (it doesn't support brushes, also it's vector software). I'm trying to find something that I can do using Inkscape's tools that won't take forever. I mean, there may not be a way to do it easily, but I'm going to try anyway! I've set this map project aside for now to do this month's challenge, but I'll be starting it again towards the end of the month.

Thanks for pointing me towards Diamond's map. That's a great use of caterpillar mountains, and something that I may try to imitate. Cheers!

[GreatWhiteNorth]

I probably should've read a little closer, sorry!

[ChickPea]

Oh, it's no problem. i appreciate you giving me another example of caterpillar mountains to look at!

[KMAlexander]

I'm not an Inkscape user, but I believe it'll allow you to use pattern brushes which is how I did my vector hachure brush set.

Essentially, I created a bunch of small illustrations that mimicked a section of hachure elevations, then used it as the base for a pattern. Then you just apply the hachure pattern you want to the stroke.

Here's a thread about my set: https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=39622

[Falconius]

This guy has great inkscape tutorials, and I think I remember one of them being something like Alexander described, so it may be worthwhile to sift thought his channel a bit and you may find something to help you.